ouberlord

True. I mean I believe that there should be some form of mitigation that can be done, but it shouldn't be as simple as shooting people who look different. Really, I think there should just be more reasons to need to group up; right now there isn't anything that can't be done solo. Either that, or put enough options into the sandbox that a community could be formed of some sort.

I think implementing it as a stealth mechanic would be difficult to achieve without making other areas of the game too easy, but I'd be all for it being implemented as a high risk vs low noise (or outright last resort) option.

How was it well balanced before? Survivor shoots someone, steals their gear, becomes a bandit. Plays the game as normal in the sparsely populated north to get their humanity back up and/or boosts it back up, becomes a survivor again. Repeat. Alternatively: Bandit posts up with a rifle in Chernogorsk. Shoots lots of people, and stays a bandit. Server buzz generates over "Theres a bandit in Cherno", and the smart people avoid the area. You shouldn't have implicitly trusted survivors before, because they could have easily been a bandit just 15 minutes prior. All the bandit skin did was made the mass killers easily identifiable (to which they already were and are at least until global chat is removed) and punish those who killed in self defense (even in scenarios where they didn't shoot first).

Well, no. My point is that they didn't have to hide to begin with if the bandit cared about keeping up their appearance, due to the relative ease in gaming the humanity system.

There wasn't a drawback before the change. If you only killed a survivor once every couple days with enough playtime in between you could revert back to the survivor skin for every kill, and far less time between kills as such if you had help in boosting your humanity artificially. It only identified the serial killers, and you can already identify those by the fact that they are using a sniper rifle as their primary weapon and/or are waiting on a rooftop in Cherno/Elektro.

"The server is just going to be a giant deathmatch" I keep seeing this, and yet ever since Rocket announced the removal of the bandit skin and the hibernation of the humanity system I've seen the exact same level of cooperation (actually slightly more thereof) and the same level of banditry. I've seen the same lines in chat of "Bandit killed me near X, be careful he was using a sniper rifle", and I've seen the same "You friendly, I'm friendly, lets work together". Haven't even seen anyone pissed about a betrayal yet ranting in chat. If the game is going to devolve into deathmatch it hasn't happened yet, and the point can be made that it was just team deathmatch before. The previous system both allowed for too many people to "accidentally" become bandits (self defense shooting is the main cause there) as well as lulled people into a false sense of complacency. It was/is incredibly easy to get your humanity back up after making a kill, especially if you play with another person, so a cunning bandit could make a kill a day and look like a survivor for every one of them. Additionally, since killing bandits had no repercussions whatsoever you had no reason *not* to shoot them, as you didn't know under what circumstances they got that skin. The point is you can't truly trust anyone in the game, period. Adding mouseover tags or a reputation system is the same thing as a bandit skin. I like the idea of being able to wash away the blood as a middle ground between realism and gameplay, but even that just assumes that a bandit doesn't just stock up on the items to clean themselves with and clean up between kills. Every action in the game has benefits and drawbacks, and choosing to interact with other players is one of them (and one of the things that makes the mod unique), regardless on if that interaction is shooting at them, talking to them, or simply watching them from afar. Putting in a "I can trust this person based on X" or "This person is a cold blooded killer because of Y" feature would to me be about the same as putting in the ability to see all players on the map; either way the ambiguity and suspense is thrown out in favor to make the gameplay easier to digest.

... What? Er, what part was confusing? My point was that bandits could pretty easily become survivors again.

The stealth option would entirely rely on if zombies actually have a set FOV. They may and I'm just not aware, but even then unless you are prone you still make some noise and its not as if zombies stand still. Besides, there is already a stealth option, the bow, but it could use a buff before it would be a viable option really. I think with any melee there should be a trade off. One option would be to make it deplete some stamina per swing, and make it so if your stamina is low enough zombies can knock you down / do more damage per swipe. Thus, one or two swings to take out a zombie is viable but not a prolonged effort against a group of them. It should also have a really short range and take at least two hits to drop a zombie, as otherwise you could (lag permitting) walk through a town and pick off zombies one by one. I've never actually ran out of ammo, but there should be some options for players right now who do. As it stands you either choose death, sneak into an area and hope it has ammo, or rely on another player (while at the same time admitting to them that you are a defenseless pinata filled with goodies).

Erm, maybe I'm missing something here, but don't you also get humanity back (up to 2500) simply by playing the game? The wiki says 1800 per hour (at a rate of 150 per 5 minutes) which is too high, but a friend of mine killed in self defense and he was already back up to 2500 after a few more hours of play. Not to mention, whats stopping a pair of bandits from going to a hospital and using the blood packs on each other to more quickly boost their humanity? I mean, shoot them in the leg, bandage them, tranfuse them, repeat until supplies are gone. It's pretty easy to tell who the deathmatch players are; they're the ones by Cherno/Elektro on top of the buildings or in other high population/traffic areas. Most people are more worried about the random stranger they meet inland, who acts nice first then shoots them in the back later. My point is that people should have *been* worried about this. The bandit skin only marked those who routinely killed survivors and did not care if they were a bandit; not the truly sociopathic ones who could easily kill a person and then become a survivor again to keep up the ruse.

I would argue that life would mean even less if cross server support died. What is to stop me from making a character I care about on one server, and then just being a raging kamikaze survivor on others? With cross server support in place I only ever have that one character, which means that regardless of the server every action I take has consequences, and any character is the culmination of the choices I've made over my last play sessions regardless of on what physical server I happened to be playing on.

The skin ultimately was more damaging to immersion than anything IMO. Two examples: 1) I saw a bandit running towards me, and gunned him down. Not because he was shooting at me (though he must have been going to), but because there were no repercussions. I get off guilt free and with an extra bit of supplies with the only thought that took place being the one that drove my trigger finger. 2) Last night we (me and a buddy) went into a town and heard shots. "Novy sobor, are you friendly?" Nothing. "Novy sobor, respond or you will be presumed hostile" No response. We end up finding him in a barn, and I call out his position on vent. His Lee Enfield is at his shoulder aiming at us, and though I hesitated and it seemed he did as well my friend shot him dead. He ended up feeling bad about it, "what if we could have talked him down?" "Yeah but he was pointing a gun at us, he could just as easily have killed one of us" You know, the part that would take place in real life. Probably the most compelling thing that I've had happen in the mod so far. I really like the idea of skins that you can find though. Some people might want to look like a villain, because they can. Others might want to blend in to do their villainy, because they can. Ultimately, I'm not sure an otherwise arbitrary number should influence how people are outwardly perceived, or certainly not function as an early warning system. I've never trusted anyone implicitly before, and the removal of this skin system for now doesn't change that at all but rather makes it even more interesting.

After playing a few hours with 1.5.7, I no longer have any problem overall with the increased zombie spawn. I spawned in Solnichniy once and was able to sneak through and loot most of the town, and even though I did end up pissing off a horde twice I scavenged enough ammo that I had plenty to deal with them. I only started playing in 1.5.6 so I can't say anything about previous releases, but zombies went from a minor nuisance to a "I must think about all actions before doing them and really keep situational awareness at all times". Starting off after a death is tougher, and I do agree that if possible there should be some areas that are less densely populated with zombies but also only contain beginner loot like bandages, makarov mags, and food. For any new guns, packs, or better supplies you're going to have to go into the bigger population centers, but at least there would be a place where you could scrape up enough to just barely get by if you had to burn through a bunch of ammo just getting out of the starting area.